The War Z developer Hammerpoint Interactive sort of apologized to gamers who might have "misread" the game's Steam product page, and took a shot at "extreme DayZ fanboys." Yesterday Hammerpoint released their zombie survival game on Steam much to the delight of many users who were looking forward to playing it. The game ended up being pretty popular - in fact it had the most sales of any game on its launch day. But then fans struck back at the developer claiming that the game they had purchased lacked a lot of the features that were promised on the product page. As pointed out in this excellent Eurogamer report, a Reddit user managed to capture a screengrab of the product page - with all of its promised features - before the page was quickly altered to be in line with what features it actually contained.

So what were those features that fans claimed were missing? The original product page listed multiple maps that were supposed to be 100 - 400 square kilometers in size, the ability for 100 people to play on a single server, rentable private servers, a skill system, and a friends list. The game, which the developers call a "Foundation Release," offers only one map and the ability for 50 people to play per server. The product page has since been updated on steam.

Responding to consumer complaints about "false advertising" on The War Z forums, executive producer Sergey Titov acknowledged that his company made a mistake with the Steam product page:

"As you all know we launched the game on Steam yesterday," he wrote. "Okay - we're number one top grossing game on Steam right now - thank you guys for your support. At the same time it was clear that there were a number of customers that felt that information about the game was presented in a way that could have allowed for multiple interpretations. We've taken steps to correct this and format information presented on our Steam Store page in a way so it provides more clear information about game features that are present in the Foundation Release and what to expect in the coming weeks."

"We also want to extend our apologies to all players who misread information about game features," he added. "At the end of the day our goal is to serve our players as best as we can, and we love when you guys steer us into the right way of doing it!"

In an interview with GameSpy, Titov said those who felt that they were misled by the product page and still insist on a refund can get one through Steam or their web site - if they bought it there.

"I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say, 'no I was misled,' where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first," he said.

There's a lot more from Titov on the fan hate the game has gotten after launch from what Titov calls "extreme DayZ fanboys" in this thread.

Comments

In a few days, I'm sure this game will become "the most refunded title on steam, ever."

The whole thing wreaks of a panicky cash grab and the developers are just stalling for time long enough for them to find a legitimate, legalese excuse for why they can't give back all the money they got for their shoddy, poorly cobbled together, alpha build of a game before they stop supporting it all together and disappear overnight.

EDIT: Would you look at that! Steam disabled it. You can no longer buy War Z on Steam, though the listing and the community pages are still available.

They can't give all the money back, because technically they never received alot of it.

If what I'm hearing is true, then alot of people actually defrauded WarZ by "purchasing" the game and then canceling the transaction as soon as they'd installed it, so that WarZ never actually received a cent of it.

Also, one of the guys who worked on WarZ was responsible for working on Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

tbh the more i read/see of this the more i'm turned away from it. the devs really do appear to be lying through their teeth at every turn about every little thing. it looks far more like they just released because their funding ran out, and now they're making a quick cash in to cover, then will blame liers and such for the eventual failure of the game.